


Memories of Another Wolf

by hellostarlight20



Series: Stories of the past-prompts [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Romance, TARDIS - Freeform, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7258612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellostarlight20/pseuds/hellostarlight20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exploring a new planet, neither the Doctor nor Rose expect to be confronted with a remnant of the Time War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories of Another Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> @arynrds asked Ten x Rose V. An abandoned or empty place.  
> Nearly canon compliant (shocking, I know!)  
> All information taken from Tardis.wikia.com  
> This story went nowhere that I expected it to. It’s a little creepy with mentions of the Time War.

“Not all abandoned places are empty.”

“What was that?” Rose asked as they crept through the ruins of a castle, abandoned to time.

The Doctor cleared his throat and grinned widely. She was not fooled. “This is an adventure! New planet, new experiences.”

Rose wanted to tell him that if he suddenly had a yearning to hike through abandoned castle ruins, there were hundreds across Europe. But that defeated the purpose of landing the TARDIS in a new place and exploring.

“Why’d the TARDIS bring us here?” she asked instead.

The smell—must and mold and weeds and who knew what all else—clogged her nose. Dust settled on her face and with every movement, every step, Rose felt as if they walked through a cloud of dust drawn like magnets to her skin.

She sneezed.

“Here.” He held out a handkerchief and she gratefully took it. “Who knows,” the Doctor said. “Adventure, knowledge, a little fun?”

“Walking through a dust cloud is not my idea of fun,” Rose said and sneezed again. Then she grinned. “Knowledge?” She deliberately looked around. “Maybe,” she allowed. “There are books and scrolls here.”

“This does look familiar,” he allowed. “Not looks, no. Feels.”

“Been to the planet before?” Rose asked and reached for his hand. The comfort of skin-to-skin contact eased her trepidation, her foreboding a bit. Just a bit. “Or this castle specifically? Maybe before it was ruins?”

“No…or I don’t think so. Maybe. Feels familiar. Feels—my skin itches.”

The Doctor stopped and looked around the courtyard. He closed his eyes and stood so still Rose no longer felt trepidation but outright fear. The Doctor was rarely, if ever, so still. She swallowed and when he released her hand, had the unreasonable urge to pull him back to her.

The wind kicked up just then. Of course it did. Rose shivered though the air wasn’t cold. It was rather warm, humid, heavy. Heavy. She looked at the crumbling stone walls, the wood eaten by animals she didn’t know and probably didn’t want to see. The greenery sprouting between cracks in the stone floor.

It didn’t move. The wind brushed her hair but not the grasses.

Up through the broken ceiling, the night shone inky black. Stars dotted the sky, a hundred hundred of them so dense it took her breath away. There was no moon, not tonight at least, if one—or more—orbited this planet.

“Do you hear that?” Rose asked far softer than she intended. “That howl?”

It sounded like a wolf. The sound made her shudder, her skin suddenly cold, her heart pounding hard in her chest. She knew that sound. She was that sound, she—

“Rose?”

Rose blinked and looked at the Doctor. Smiling, she shook her head. But that howl echoed in her thoughts.

_The Wolf. There is something of the Wolf about you. You burnt like the sun._

“What did you hear?” the Doctor asked. His hands slipped up her arms, held tight to her biceps as if anchoring them to each other. 

“Hear?” Rose shrugged. “Nothing. I thought—but it was nothing.”

He looked at her oddly, clearly not convinced. Rose honestly couldn’t say if she heard the wolf howl or if it was the remnants of their time in Scotland and that werewolf. She grinned and retook his hand. They moved along the uneven floor, silent despite the fact they were the only two in the ruins.

That they knew of.

Where had that come from? Rose shuddered and held the Doctor’s hand tighter.

“There’s something about this place,” she ventured, not sure how to say what she felt or if she was being silly. “It’s like an echo. Like the whole castle is trying to tell us something.”

“You feel that?” He asked sharply. His eyes, darker in the shadows of the ruined roof, looked so ancient as if he looked into her soul and knew every single one of her secrets.

Rose shook her head but couldn’t dislodge the feeling. She licked her lips, tried to swallow past a dry throat. “Don’t you feel it? There aren’t any animals here, no birds or bats or mice—or whatever passes for them in this place.”

They turned a corner, scattered dirt and dust and broken flagstones. Nothing moved save the dust.

“The wind blew, but the grasses don’t.” The Doctor stopped and looked up through the ceiling, completely gone here. “It’s like the grasses started to grow, the trees tried to bloom, but—” 

“But they stopped.”

“It’s almost as if—” he cut himself off.

It didn’t matter. Rose suddenly knew what he was going to say.

“As if they’re frozen in time.” He cursed and shuddered. Whirled back to face her with a look of such panic, it froze her in place. “We need to leave.” He grabbed her hand and dragged her from the room. “We need to leave now. Five minutes ago. We should never have landed.” He ran through the rooms they’d painstakingly explored.

“If we shouldn’t have landed,” Rose said as they raced out the door, “then why did the TARDIS land here? You said she brought us here, it wasn’t your destination.”

“I set the randomizer, thought a little fun—but it’s not.” They ran for the TARDIS, sitting on a grassy knoll a short walk to the castle. A grassy knoll that didn’t move in the wind.

“What is it then?” Rose demanded as the ran up the knoll.

“The Wolf’s Heart Nebula.”

The Doctor unlocked the door and literally shoved her inside. Rose, too stunned to move herself or protest his suddenly harsh movement, stumbled up the ramp and to the console. He already pressed buttons and turned knobs and danced around the controls.

“Wolf’s Heart?” She repeated but wasn’t sure the words made it past her lips.

“This planet, this entire area of space, the whole nebula—it was caught in the temporal wave of the Dalek’s Time Destructor.”

The TARDIS hummed as the Time Rotor engaged and they dematerialized from this strange world. Still cold, numb, Rose stared at the Doctor. He hadn’t said more, and she was once again afraid of his silence.

“What’s a Time Destructor?” she asked for lack of anything else.

“Just that.” He sighed, ran a hand over his face. Sagged against the console beside her. “I was—I was caught in its temporal wave. The TARDIS protected me, but the wave destroyed—remember the Nestine Conscious?”

Rose nodded and forced her lips into a semblance of a smile. It hurt, felt false and forced. “Our first meeting. Course I remember.”

“It destroyed their home world.”

She held his hand and the Doctor looked down at it as if he didn’t understand the contact. Suddenly his fingers tightened on hers.

“The Time Destructor is just that. Deconstructs time. The Daleks…they used it.” The last words caught in his throat.

“I’m sorry.” She leaned her head against his shoulder, wrapped her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry.”

He ran his hand over his eyes, shook his head. “I don’t understand why the TARDIS brought us here, let alone how we landed.”

_There’s something of the wolf about you…_

Rose closed her eyes and pushed it aside. “I don’t know,” she lied. “How about,” she said in a louder, forcibly happier tone, “we go to that parts market you love so much?”

“Rose Tyler.” The Doctor pressed his lips to her forehead. “You’re a genius. We’ll order the banana icies and that mango burger you love and walk the stalls, yeah?”

She grinned and stepped back. “I’m just going to use the loo,” she said, which was only a half lie. “Be back in a minute!”

“I’ll set the coordinates.”

Rose nodded and nearly ran for her room. _Something of the wolf_ , Wolf’s Heart Nebula…they’d only met Queen Victoria and saved her from the werewolf two days ago. Two days. Was that planet a coincidence?

Had the TARDIS brought them there for a reason?

She shivered as quickly stripped. The strange dust still clung to her, and Rose wanted every reminder, any remnant of that planet, gone. No speck of dust, no bit of time-frozen dirt in her hair. Nothing. She seriously debated incinerating her clothes.

She showered as fast as possible then redressed in clean jeans and a low-cut sleeveless top. It did little to make her feel better. Hurrying through her makeup, she squeezed as much water from her hair as possible and decided to let it air dry. Tying her sneakers, she made her way back to the console room.

The Doctor didn’t say a word about how long her loo-break lasted. In fact, when Rose looked at him, it looked as if he, too showered. He definitely changed. No tie this time, just a t-shirt and an open Henley beneath his suit jacket.

“Ready?” he asked with that overly bright smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Roe nodded and crossed the grating. She took his hand. A dozen questions raced through her mind—how were they able to land on that planet? Why did the dust cling to her when it was time-frozen? Why did the TARDIS bring them there? 

Looking up at the Time Rotor, she thought she had at least one answer.

There was something of the wolf, all right. And it still burned in her.


End file.
